A Good Man Gone

A few months ago, I told you about how I wound up with a box of golf balls. Remember? I’m looking at those golf balls again tonight, because the sweet, decent man who gave them to me has died.

Glen was my wife’s stepfather. He was a rakish type with a Cary Grant look to him, tall, dark and handsome, with the kind of eyebrows people talked about after he left the room. I knew him only in his later years, quieter, older, and in the grip of illnesses that stripped him of his strength and memory. But in those moments when he knew who he was, and he knew who we were, he always made us smile. This guy was loaded with wit and curiosity, things I value above most else.

He was a good man, and he had a good run. But our world is diminished without him.